The Sunday Revisit Of “A Pill Doesn’t Weigh Anything”

When I was first diagnosed with Sarcoidosis in 2006, my BMI was 22. With a healthy BMI being between 18.5-24.9, I was slim and “normal”. Now five and a half years later, with no pause in taking prednisone, my BMI is now 27.1, which translates to being 30 pounds overweight.

According to my doctors, although I am overweight, compared to the general “prednisone population”, my weight gain is not that bad. The average weight gain on a prednisone patient on the drug long time could be as much as 100 pounds or more.

I still need to lose the weight though. It will be much easier on my heart. Yet I face the prospect of soon going up on my prednisone dose for the active sarcoid in my heart, and that scares me. I fear the prednisone demon’s return. The mood swings, the irritability and the insatiable hunger. That hunger that comes from no where, hurting your stomach to the point that you can and will eat the person sitting next to you. That craving for carbs and sweets. A hunger that does not seem to ever go away.

In reality though, as Dr. Teirstien once told me when I said to him that the prednisone was making me put on weight, “A pill doesn’t weigh anything”. In other words, yes, the prednisone makes you crazy hungry, but it’s what you fill that hunger with that causes the weight gain.

I have to stock up on healthy low calorie snacks and store them every where. In the car, at work, every where, because when that hunger strikes on the road, McDonalds just shines like a light on a foggy night beaconing you to come, satisfy your hunger, with a big, fat, greasy burger. And the thing is, I don’t really like McDonalds.